Monday, October 3, 2011

Zombie Driver (PC)

Rating: 3 out of 5

Pros: Inexpensive, fun, easy to get into and play

Cons: Short, not many different weapons or vehicles, no multi-player

IntroductionSo, one day I was out
robbing stores and beating up random strangers on the street for cash.
My previous ride had blown up, so I went to steal a taxi from the
intersection... but as I hopped in the seat and turned the key, I
suddenly fell through the earth into another dimension. I still felt like I was in the Grand Theft Auto universe, but something was... different.

I
had only driven a short distance in this new world before I heard an
explosion. I looked at the green cloud of gas rising ahead of me and
knew this was going to be a bad day. Before long zombies started filling
the sidewalks and buildings, and there were almost no humans to be
found. I seemed to be safe in my vehicle, as long as I didn't stop for
too long...

GameplayZombie Driver is
a top-down 2D zombiefest. Basically the game revolves around rescuing
survivors from various places on the free roaming map, bringing them to
the safe house, and killing hordes of zombies in the process. It's a
formula that's simple and fun, despite being recycled from 2 very
overused parts.

Survivors hole up a few here and a few there in
buildings spread around the map. The story mode consists of a series of
17 missions that all involve rescuing a certain number of some type of
survivors. Not much variety here, but thankfully the game is rather
short. There are at least submissions for each one, but they don't offer
much more variety than the main objectives. These all tend to include
finishing the main objective in a certain time limit, killing all the
zombies in a certain area of the map, or killing a certain number of
zombies in total while completing your rescue mission.

You get
little icons on your screen pointing the direction to the places the
survivors are holed up in, and you follow them like beacons until you
get there. Once you reach the building with survivors, there's a white
circle on the ground outside and red outlines on all the zombies in the
area. When you kill all the nearby zombies, the white circle turns
green, you park in it, and all the survivors (or as many as will fit in
your vehicle) hop in so you can take them to the safe house.

There
are a few different types of zombies. Big ones that explode and damage
your vehicle when you get near them, some that are really fast, some
will throw stuff to hit you from a short distance away. They all,
however, only have one objective in mind: kill you. If they get close
enough they will detract from your vehicle's health meter until it's
gone and you die and fail your mission. Ramming through them at high
speed causes you no damage though (strangely, you also take no damage
from smashing through lamp posts, boxes, or other vehicles), so get to
smashing...

Aside from just ramming through the zombies, there
are also a few different weapons you can unlock to help you out. The
machine gun, flamethrower, rockets and rail-guns all get unlocked at
various points in the story. They can also be upgraded between levels if
you have the cash. There are multiple upgrades for each weapon to
increase their range, power, amount of ammo/uses, etc.

Killing
many zombies in a combo nets you cash, as does destroying stacks of
boxes or other cars parked along the sidewalks. There are also power-ups
spread around the map, often down alleys or tucked into corners. These
power-ups can repair your vehicle, give you money, or switch to a
different weapon as you can only use one weapon at a time. They are
pretty obvious, as the money power-up looks like money and the
flamethrower power-up looks like some red tanks of liquid, etc.

The
last "weapon" is nitro, which isn't really a weapon but is functionally
similar. It boosts your vehicle speed when you fire it, and lets you
more easily ram through zombies. Not my favorite, but situationally
acceptable.

You also unlock additional vehicles during the story
mode, but there are only a few in total. The Taxi you start out with,
the Sports Car, the Limo, Ambulance, Police Car, Bus and the Super Car.
They are not just cosmetic changes however, as different vehicles have
different speeds, armor ratings, ramming abilities, and can carry
different amounts of passengers. A vehicle that holds 3 passengers for
example, isn't going to be all that useful on a mission that requires
you to rescue 16, because it would take 6 trips to collect passengers
and return to the safe house to drop them off. The vehicles can also
have their various attributes upgraded.

Later patches to the game
added a couple of additional game modes, namely Slaughter and Blood
Race. In the Slaughter mode, you drive around in smaller enclosed maps
with an endless zerg of zombies chasing you. Your goal is to destroy as
many as possible and rack up as high of combos as you can to get a high
enough score to earn a medal and unlock the next one. Power-ups can
periodically be picked up and an additional power-up is dropped on the
map after each wave you survive.

Blood Race has a couple
different modes. Endurance places a bomb in your vehicle, and you must
hit checkpoints to increase the timer. In Eliminator, you have a time
limit to destroy as many other vehicles as you can. Then there's the
regular race mode where you can race against other vehicles but with
weapons and zombies. These add a little needed variety to the game, but
unfortunately are still only single-player.

The main story may
take you 2 or 3 hours to complete, and when you finish the game you just
start over. There are, however, 51 Steam achievements, global leader
boards, as well as the previously mentioned Slaughter and Blood Race
game modes to help extend the play time.

ControlsThe
controls couldn't be simpler as there are really only a couple of
buttons used. You can steer with either WASD or the arrow keys. If you
prefer the keyboard, Space is your handbrake while you can use Control,
Shift or Alt to shoot. If you're more of a mouse person, the right
button will be your handbrake and the left will shoot. Pretty
complicated stuff.

GraphicsLike
previously mentioned, Zombie Driver is a 2D game viewed from a top-down
perspective. When you turn your car, the camera rotates the map so your
vehicle is always facing up on the screen.

While the style is
very much like the older Grand Theft Auto games, it's really polished
and nice looking. Everything is shiny and detailed, with abandoned
smoking vehicles and skid marks when you make fast turns. When you smash
into a stack of boxes, they all go tumbling and bouncing away before
they just disappear. When you smash through a car on the sidewalk it
blows up into a bunch of pieces, when you run over a zombie you can
watch it splatter on the ground and come apart.

SoundThe
background music was unremarkable and forgettable. The sound effects
were hit and miss. Most of the weapon firing sounds were decent and the
vehicle sound was decent, but knocking over lamp posts resulted in a
couple different ding-like sounds you'd expect to hear in a Bugs Bunny
cartoon. The 1.2.5 patch thankfully added some pretty good voice overs
to the mission briefings and character dialog.

Final ThoughtsThere
are a few mods available for the game as well, but you can likely count
them on your two hands, and most of them are simply graphical mods.
There's a tutorial for creating your own mods, but you can't really add
anything new to the game. Replace existing models or sound effects,
modify rate of fire or ammo count? No problem. Add a completely new
vehicle or new missions? Not possible. Disappointing.

Zombie
Driver is a fun game despite the length and lack of story. Who actually
expects much story in a game about running over zombies anyway? It's
inexpensive, polished, and a fun way to kill a couple hours here and
there.